This is a very good question, and let me start by saying that climate change is real, it is happening now, and it is going to impact virtually every aspect of our lives, from where we live to what we eat to the kind of work we do. It is both an urgent issue and one that we will be dealing with for decades to come.

In my view, government has two important roles to play in this. The first is on the emissions side. As you know, climate change is caused by a build-up of carbon in the atmosphere, and that is primarily a result of burning fossil fuels. One that carbon in released into the atmosphere, it stays there for hundreds of years – by making the choice to continue burning fossil fuels today, we are heating up the planet for generations to come. Or to be more blunt about it, by continuing to burn coal, oil, and gas, we are ensuring that our kids and grand-children will be living on a radically different – and likely more chaotic – planet.

Government can play a big role by enacting policies that encourage a speedy transition to clean energy such as wind and solar. The world has made a lot of progress in this direction in recent years, but we still have a very long way to go. Governments – state, local, and federal – have a lot of tools at their disposal to accelerate this. The biggest and most powerful – and most controversial – would be to put a tax or a fee on carbon. In the U.S., there have been a number of proposals over the years to do this, but none have successfully made it through Congress, largely because of intense lobbying effort to stop it from the fossil fuel industry. Other tools to accelerate the transition to clean energy include setting state-wide standards for renewable energy production (aka renewable portfolio standards), changing laws and regulations that make it difficult for solar and wind generators to connect to the grid, maintaining aggressive vehicle emissions standards (the Trump administration has proposed weakening them), and cutting subsidies to fossil fuel industries.

The other thing government can do is on the adaptation side. No matter how fast we reduce emissions, we’re still going to have significant climate impacts (as we’re seeing right now with summer heat and wildfires). Government has a big role to play in helping to reduce those impacts. One place to start would be reforming the National Flood Insurance Program, which is currently billions of dollars in debt and encourages people to rebuild their homes in frequently flooded areas. Building codes could be strengthened to make homes and structures more resilient to flooding and fires. Zoning laws can be revised to discourage building in areas that are at high risk for fire and flooding.

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